


never be the same

by lucylikestowrite



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ava's POV, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Fluff, F/F, First Time, Light Angst, Mild Smut, Romantic Soulmates, but only in the way that it is an, like very mild, so also kinda, the rest of it is just following the canon up till episode 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 03:39:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12950505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: Ava Sharpe, obviously, does not believe in soulmates. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain. There’s no way that you could be predestined to love someone you’ve never met. The concept of soulmates doesn’t fit in with her worldview, and she’s quite okay with that.That’s not to say she doesn’t believe in love, or even love at first sight. Just that she doesn’t believe there’s any woman out there that she’s got some special tie to. She’s seen many things in her time with the Time Bureau, and soulmates aren’t one of them.Which is why she doesn’t know what to do when the Legends crash into the Time Bureau, she takes one look at Sara Lance, and feels like her world just tipped upside down. It almost knocks the breath out of her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is camila's lol. this fic is brought to you by this song on repeat many, many times.

Ava Sharpe, obviously, does not believe in soulmates. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain. There’s no way that you could be predestined to love someone you’ve never met. The concept of soulmates doesn’t fit in with her worldview, and she’s quite okay with that.

 

That’s not to say she doesn’t believe in love, or even love at first sight. Just that she doesn’t believe there’s any woman out there that she’s got some special tie to. She’s seen many things in her time with the Time Bureau, and soulmates aren’t one of them.

 

Which is why she doesn’t know what to do when the Legends crash into the Time Bureau, she takes one look at Sara Lance, and feels like her world just tipped upside down. It almost knocks the breath out of her.

 

Everything slows down. She takes a breath and it seems to last for an hour. She blinks and it lasts a day. The world spins around her, but she is stuck, rooted to one spot. She’s not sure if she’s ever going to move again.

 

And then the world rights itself. Half a second has passed. She snaps out of whatever just happened, and falls back into action. She’s good at that, and turning off her emotions, and getting to work is usually as easy for her as falling asleep.

 

Today, it’s a little harder, but she still has a knee on one of the Legends’ backs another half a second later.

 

She doesn’t dare look at Sara, terrified of the world blinking out on her again.

 

Rip, intervenes, like he always does, and because the universe apparently hates her, five seconds later, Sara Lance is pointing her own gun right at her, and it _hurts._

 

Fierce eyes stare her down, gun steady, finger on the trigger. Ava makes herself meet the gaze of the woman in front of her, and has to hold in a gasp. It feels like someone has tied a string to a ribcage, and is tugging on it, trying to pull her in.

 

She feels naked, which is probably one of the worst ways to feel when you have a gun pointed at your face. Her face remains straight, because she’s a professional, but her mind is racing.

 

Somewhere behind her, people are talking. The conversation seems to go on forever. She drags her gaze away from Sara, but it’s like she can still feel her presence, still feel the gun between her fingers.

 

The standoff ends, and when she gets her gun back, she could swear she can feel Sara’s fingerprints burnt onto it, and she _hates_ it.

 

Sure, it still feels like something is tugging at her insides, but she’s regaining some composure, and she already hates whatever the hell this thing is. She’s not the sort of woman who gets told what to do, and she’s certainly not letting anything tell her who to love, so when Sara tries to talk back, she doesn’t back down easily, heat rising in her stomach.

 

She tries to look angry when Rip sends them away, but she couldn’t be more glad to get away from the Legends.

 

The second they are out of the room, she empties her gun of bullets and throws it away.

  


No matter how much she tries to get Sara Lance out of her head, she is always there, hovering at the edge of Ava’s consciousness, and it’s infuriating.

 

She’s not going to blame her capture by the Romans on that fact, but she’s not going to _not_ blame it on that. Sara is distracting her, and it’s driving her mad. Every time Sara had looked her way, to smirk or to scowl, it felt like it physically affected her.

 

And, of course, it’s Sara who rescues her, because who else, on a team full of superheroes, could it possibly be?

 

Ava didn’t need saving (yes, she did, just not by Sara).

 

The air feels electric. Sara creates sparks as she fights centurions. For a second they work together, and they fit together like puzzle pieces. As they fight together, all thoughts go out of Ava’s mind, and she doesn’t think of anything except the men in front of her. Then she actually looks at Sara, and anger rises up again. She can’t stop the biting retort that comes out of her mouth. She’s not quite sure that she does actually think the Legends’ work is terrible, but it feels good to say something, to wipe the smirk off Sara’s face.

 

The only thing that makes her feel like she’s in control is dismissal.

  


When, later, everything is set right (with time, not in Ava’s mind, because, God, that doesn’t feel like it will ever happen), Sara is still infuriatingly chipper. And it seems like every time Ava glances over, Sara is already there to meet her gaze. Ava’s mind quietly spins out of control, the tugging sensation still there, always there.

  


Of course, the sensation, like any sort of sensation you wish would go away, only gets worse in Sara’s absence, which is why, when Ava next sees her, she’s even angrier. Angry that this woman keeps screwing up, angry that the universe is telling her something she doesn’t want to hear, and above all, angry that some part of her breathes a sigh of relief when Sara appears at the end of the hallway in the Waverider, and the tugging loosens, just a bit.

 

(It doesn’t matter if she has an ulterior motive for wanting Sara arrested, for wanting to keep her close, if only to lessen the feeling, because in the end, she’s still doing what the Time Bureau wants.)

 

Sara’s refusal to go quietly is annoying, but not unexpected. Ava was ready for this.

 

(She wasn’t hoping for it, not exactly. She just knew that the closer she got, the better she’d feel, and fighting hand to hand gets you about as close as you can comfortably get to someone you hate.)

 

She gets Sara up against a wall, and hesitates for just half a second too long, the feeling of relief of being so close too much for a second (their faces are level and something else whispers at the back of her mind). Sara takes advantage of this hesitation, and Ava internally curses. She thought she had it under control, but being back in Sara’s presence is more overwhelming than she’d thought it would be.

 

The fight is so draining, physically and mentally, that Ava is glad for the temporary ceasefire. Of course, the universe still hates her, so two minutes later, Sara Lance has saved her life. Again. They fall through the portal together, and for a couple of seconds, Sara is touching her, and it feels like heaven, until she shakes Sara away, and the feeling goes. She knows she looks a mess, and hates it.

 

Her head is a mess of emotions, and she almost lets classified information slip. She hates the effect Sara is having on her. She hates it so much that it pushes out any feelings of gratitude that may or may not be trying to surface. Her chest heaves. She can still feel Sara’s fingers where they were on her arms, as though she’s left an imprint of her fingertips on Ava’s skin, even through the layers of her uniform.

 

She pushes the feeling aside, tries to regain composure. It almost works. Sara has already noticed the slip.

 

Later, she sees the photo frame on Sara’s desk. She knows it’s Laurel. She even knows who Oliver is. She’d previously studied Sara’s activities with the Legends, but now she knows everything. It’s hard not to want to research, when you have endless resources at your fingertips, and someone’s face in your mind every second of the day.

 

Sara takes the photograph, and slams it face down. She flinches, the sound loud in the echoey room. Ava wishes that it felt as final to her as it obviously did to Sara, wishes that anything with Sara could feel final. She wishes she had any way of not wanting to always come back, like some sort of angry boomerang.

 

Her hands, behind her back as always, to keep her from fidgeting, if anything else, feel clammy. Her heart beats fast. Sara asks her about Mallus, and she looks down, the memory of the moment that causes that slip still replaying over and over again in her mind. The thought makes her want to get closer, want to give in to the string pulling on her.

 

She doesn’t. She stays where she is, despite everything in her telling her to move. Sara’s scowl helps a bit with that, her eyes daggers cutting into Ava’s chest.

  


It helps that the next time they talk, it’s via video. The letting up of the pressure when they’re in the same room is nice enough, but it’s makes her soft, and she needs anger to deal with all the bullshit Sara keeps getting into.

 

The anger is easy to keep up from this distance. The distance also makes it easier to pull the trigger on the blast she sends at the Waverider. She knows it won’t hurt them, not really (she hates that that is even a consideration), but she likes the idea that she still has some power in this relationship.

 

She doesn’t expect Sara to give in easily, and she doesn’t. However, she’s not expecting the game of chicken Sara decides to play in the time vortex. Part of Ava wants to leave it up to fate, this mystic force that seems intent on fucking with her, but she knows that the universe isn't kind enough to sort this out for her.

 

At the last second, she jumps away. She knows Sara well enough to know that she wasn’t going to give in. She is also pretty sure that Sara knows _her_ well enough to know that she wasn’t going to risk the lives of all her agents. Part of her wonders if Sara knows, if she’s noticed, if that’s why she didn’t pull away, because she knew Ava wouldn’t hurt her, but she can’t know.

 

Ava stops, her mind racing to a halt.

 

She can’t hurt Sara. She doesn’t want to, any more (maybe it’s selfish. Maybe it’s just because she knows it will hurt herself. Maybe it’s not.)

 

She shakes the thought off, filing it away as much as she can with any thought about Sara, which is to say, not very much. The file that keeps her thoughts about Sara is never more than an arm’s stretch away, all too easy to access and far too hard to ignore.

 

When she talks to Sara later, and Sara smiles that ridiculous smile she always does, Ava almost wants to smile back. Almost. She doesn’t.

  


Something changes. Over time, the ache lessens slightly, or maybe Ava just gets used to it, but she almost misses it. And when Sara calls, she is almost happy to hear her voice. She knows that Sara turning Rip in is only a way to ensure the Legends’ freedom, but it feels like some weird sort of trust.

  


And so, things keep changing. Ava… stops hating Sara. She’s not sure how, and she’s not sure why, but she just does. And, seemingly because of this, the constant pressure that she feels, the string around her ribs, changes. It doesn’t loosen, or go away, but something about the feeling changes, and she doesn’t hate it anymore. In fact, its constant presence becomes something of a reassurance.

  


And then, a month or so later, Ava wakes up in the middle of the night, a stabbing pain in her chest, and she knows, just knows, that something is very wrong. A quick scan tells her it’s nothing happening to her, but she knew that already. Five minutes more of research, and she finds her answer. One of the Legends has died, and she is feeling Sara’s pain. All she wants is to open up a portal right then, and put a stop to the pain that she’s feeling, but she doesn’t. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore the pain. She fails.

 

She doesn’t get much sleep for the next couple of days. The pain slowly dulls, and at some point it fades away completely. She still doesn’t call. There’s no reason to. She has no reason to, at least not any sort of reason she could explain.

 

So she waits, and waits, and waits for what seems like forever but isn’t even close, and then an anachronism turns up, and that is all the excuse she needs.

 

Sara asks for her help, and she does not hesitate, doesn’t even think, opening a portal a split second later. She is falling deep into something that she shouldn’t be.

 

Sara says something that is almost a compliment, and Ava falls further.

 

Sara drinks some Vikings under the table, and Ava, not being quite such a proficient drinker, lets something slip about her… persuasions, and she could swear she sees a smirk on Sara’s face in the corner of her eye. She ignores it, her mind already clouded from the alcohol.

 

Later, when the drunk one gets in trouble, Ava fights alongside Sara again, instead of against her, and it feels good. They make a good team. They have always made a good team, even from the start.

 

And why not admit that? She’s given in to whatever this is, so it’s easy to see how well they fit together.

 

And then, when she’s called back to the Time Bureau, it’s easy to lie and make it sound like she is just obeying orders, like she didn’t beg for backup, beg for allowance to stay. It is hard to leave, especially when the way Sara looks at her has changed as well.

 

It’s softer. Everything is softer. Sara is no longer so angular, so spiky. Neither is Ava. They’ve both changed, and as Ava leaves, it’s with a heavy heart, and with a feeling in her stomach telling her that it’s the wrong thing to do.

 

And, of course, it is. With no warning, the string that has been tying her and Sara together for months snaps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beware! rating change

The connection is gone, and Ava’s mind is suddenly quiet. _Sara_ is gone. It feels like she’s been punched in the stomach. She doubles over in pain, the absence of the connection hurting more than the ache ever did, and it’s all she can do not to cry out, or scream, or fall apart right there, in her office in the Time Bureau. A whimper escapes from her lips.

 

Her mind is spinning at a million miles per hour. She stumbles up from where she is sitting in her office, and just about makes it to her bin before she throws up. She hadn’t realised until that very second how severely she had come to rely on the feeling in her stomach, on the knowledge of the string connecting them. She wipes her mouth, her hands trembling, and on weak legs, she leans against her bookcase, giving herself a second to think.

 

She doesn’t know what any of this means, just that she feels empty, and that Sara has to be in danger, or worse.

 

She doesn’t want to think about that, _can’t_ think about what it could mean, or she’ll probably break down.

 

Thirty seconds have already passed, and she knows, just _knows_ that if she waits much longer it will be too late to do anything at all- but that’s too close to thinking, so she opens a portal without even thinking about it, arriving back on the beach.

 

As she sets foot on the sand, she realises that she has no idea how she knew exactly where to go - it just happened. This gives her hope - maybe there is some remnant of the connection lingering, guiding her.

 

There’s a portal on the beach, glowing blue, but it’s not normal. The edges are jagged, twisting and turning and pulsing, something bad leaking out from inside of it.

 

Everyone else on the beach seems to be frozen. Ava wonders if maybe the whole world has stopped. It certainly feels like that. She feels stuck in a moment, stuck between breaths. She gulps at air, not sure how long she’d been holding her breath for. The emptiness still burns in her chest, the absence of a connection blinding.

 

Facing the portal, Ava can see Sara’s outline through the swirling air. She’s pretty sure she know would know the lines of Sara’s body with her eyes closed.

 

She reaches a hand out, and wonders for a second what will happen if she touches this portal, this _thing_ that could wreck her so completely in a millisecond, and then she doesn’t think any more, because the outline begins to pulse, and Sara isn’t moving, and Ava _knows_ that it’s going to close with Sara on the other side if she doesn’t do anything.

 

Ava sticks her arm through it, wincing slightly as she breaches it, and breathes a sigh of relief as her arm doesn’t immediately fall off. Instead, her hand makes contact with Sara’s arm. She grips down so hard she thinks it might leave bruises, and she pulls with everything she can, the portal disintegrating a split second after Sara tumbles back through.

 

And just like that, the string springs back into place, with a jolt that is so strong that she wonders if Sara might, finally, have felt it. The feeling ripples through Ava’s body, radiating out, warming everything. She wonders briefly if she might be glowing. Her chest heaves, and she pushes hair out of her eyes with shaky hands.

 

Maybe Sara did feel it, because she is looking at Ava like she’s never before, and all Ava wants to do is pull her in and never let go (hold her so tight that bruises really do follow her fingertips) but she doesn’t, just says, “You needed me.” She doesn’t say how she knew, and Sara doesn’t ask why, just comments on her timing, but from the way Sara is looking at her, she must realise it’s something more than a coincidence.

 

As they walk back to the Waverider, Sara’s hand drifts to her chest.

 

Maybe it is wishful thinking, but Ava thinks she feels fingers ghosting across her skin.

 

She makes Gideon check up on Sara, because she’s past trying to look like she doesn’t care.

  


When Sara talks about what happened, everything makes sense. She’d been cut off from warmth and love and that had engulfed her so entirely that it stopped whatever they had between them from fighting through the void.

 

Leaving Sara is even harder that time, especially now she knows Mallus is real, and what he can do. She doesn’t ever want to feel like that again. She is terrified that if she leaves she will wake up one day and it will be too late.

 

But she still leaves, because the Waverider is not her office, and no-one here is paying her.

She knows she’s coming back - and she’s almost certain that Sara wants her to. Almost. Always almost.

 

The second she’s left, she wants to go back, but she doesn’t. She goes to meetings and tells people what they need to know, and does her duty. She wants to go back that evening, but she doesn’t. She makes dinner, and eats dinner, and tries not to think of the look on Sara’s face when she pulled her out of that portal. She fails. She goes to sleep, that face etched on the back of her eyelids.

 

She is woken in the middle of the night by a call from Sara.

 

She scrambles to pick it up, her eyes bleary, her hands still half asleep.

 

“Was it just good timing?” Sara asks.

 

“No,” Ava admits, because there is no point lying any more. At some point, she will have to lay all her cards on the table. She might as well start shuffling.

 

“Okay,” Sara says, and doesn’t ask anymore, just considers this. “Thank you.”

 

Then she hangs up.

 

Sleep does not come easily. Her heart beats out of time. Sometimes she wonders whether it’s just her pulse that she feels on her wrist.

  
  


Mallus is not an immediate problem. They solve another anachronism, and Ava makes a thinly veiled excuse for why she had to be there. She is pretty sure Sara sees right through it, even if nobody else does.

 

Sara doesn’t say anything, but Ava catches her looking at when she thinks Ava isn’t looking.

 

She doesn’t say anything the next time, or the next time.

 

Neither of them say anything. It’s a silent dance, neither of them getting too close or too far. They both know their parts off by heart, and neither of them is deviating. At the end of each mission, Ava leaves, goes back to the Time Bureau, like she always does.

 

And then, the sixth time Ava helps the legends, Sara asks her to stay, and she does. There is nothing pressing for her back at home. Or back at her house. She is not sure where home is. It feels like a person. She spirals inside her head, digging her fingers into her arm where they are hidden behind her back.

 

At the end of the day, the Legends disperse around the Waverider, and when they are alone, Sara turns on Ava, her gaze boring into the depths of Ava’s soul.

 

She’s not sure anyone has ever seen her quite in the way that Sara seems to be right now.

 

“If it wasn’t good timing, what was it?”

 

Ava should’ve been planning how to explain it, but she hasn’t. It’s impossible to explain. It shouldn’t be. In a world with superheroes and time travel and magic and resurrection, it shouldn’t be hard to explain, but it is. Because all it is a feeling, with no proof that it’s real. For all she knows, it’s all in her head. (She knows it’s not in her head. Nothing this strong could be in her head.)

 

But she knows she has to explain it, because if she doesn’t if she doesn’t let it all out, if she doesn’t finally tell the one person who needs to know, then she’s going to waste away.

 

So she starts at the beginning. Starts at the first time they met, how it felt like someone had pulled a rug out from under her, like someone had rewritten her DNA, pulled her apart and put her back together again.

 

How she hated it, hated Sara (Sara winces), and tried to fight it, and how that made it worse. How being close made it better. How it felt like it would consume her whole mind.

 

She bares her whole soul (because, God, at this point, it feels like this has taken over every part of her being), lays it all out on the table in front of her, and feels like offering herself up as a sacrifice.

 

Sara just listens, and when Ava is finished, she looks up, and Sara’s gaze is as steady as ever.

 

“You think I’m crazy,” Ava says, her gaze dropping again, her voice low.

 

“If you’re crazy, I am too.” Ava’s eyeline snaps back up. Sara shrugs.

 

This is all the confirmation Ava needs. She kisses Sara, and it feels like finally, everything has slotted into place. They have finally linked up, fit the puzzle pieces together. Her hands find themselves wrapped around the back of Sara’s neck. Sara’s hands are on her waist, pulling her in, and she doesn’t ever want to move again. She’s not sure she even can - it feels like there’s a magnet between them. North has finally found south.

 

Her chest feels warm, and she feels like someone is pulling on the string, and then all of a sudden, it doesn’t snap, or break, or fade away, it just settles, and the chorus in her mind quiets, and it’s not like last time, not at all, because this time, she has Sara underneath her fingertips, moving and living and breathing, and the string hasn’t been yanked away from her, it has just moved into the background because it’s finally done its job.

 

It’s still there, and she hopes it always will be, guiding them back together, but for now, she doesn’t need any sort of magical connection to tell her when Sara’s close, because her hands are in her hair, and on her face, and down her arms, and she’s pretty sure that Sara’s going to be staying pretty close by.

 

Sara’s hands skim over her hips and settle back on her waist, and her shirt is in the way. She wants to feel everything, and she can’t, and it’s not enough. She hates the standard-issue cotton with every bit of being not consumed with the woman in front of her, until Sara’s hands push the tails of her shirt away. Goosebumps immediately jump up on her skin, a trail underneath Sara’s every move.

 

Ava pulls away for a second.

 

“This is okay, right?”

 

Sara smiles, leaning their foreheads together. Her eyes close, and they are so close that her eyelashes brush against Ava’s skin.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good,” she manages to breathe. Her foot finds the floor, and she pulls them both up and off the sofa they had settled on. Sara’s head tilts, and one of Ava’s hand moves from the nape of Sara’s neck to trail over the exposed skin. The kiss doesn’t break - they are in sync, and it feels as if Sara knows what she’s going to do before Ava does it.

 

She certainly doesn’t seem surprised when Ava opens a portal with the courier on her wrist, and they fall backwards into Sara’s bedroom.

 

Ava is only the tiniest surprised that they successfully make it to her intended destination. Five seconds ago, she’d had no idea where Sara’s room was, but she doesn’t feel like a lack of knowledge about Sara is going to be a problem any more.

 

The room is stark. She had not expected anything else.

 

The bed is soft, and so are Sara’s hands when they slowly unbutton Ava’s shirt. Too slowly. She’s not breakable, in fact, she feels invincible right now, but when she tries to say something, Sara leans down and kisses her again.

 

A hand rests on Ava’s chest, and she gasps, because Sara’s splayed fingers are touching the very spot that started everything.

 

Sara notices.

 

Ava doesn’t want Sara to ever stop noticing things.

 

As she pushes the sleeves of Ava’s shirt off her shoulder, Sara finally talks, in between peppering kisses on Ava’s face, neck, arms, chest, until she thinks she’s going to crazy.

 

“I’ve been kinda… cut off from everything ever since they brought me back. Things get kinda fucked up when you die, you know?”

 

Ava breathlessly nods. She, obviously, does not know.

 

“Emotions came back. Love took… a little longer. I think it’s just been easier to ignore it. Whatever the fuck Mallus did to me, I think it hit some sort of reset button.”

 

Sara shrugs out of her overshirt, leaning back down. Her arms rest either side of Ava’s head, and all she can see is Sara. Her world has narrowed to two people.

 

Sara’s face is close, too close, too close not to be touching. Her hair, pulled out of its usual practical ponytail, tickles the skin on Ava’s face.

 

“Got out of that portal, and it felt like the world was just you and me, Agent.”

 

“Agent?” Ava asks, an eyebrow quirking.

 

Sara leans back, the absence immediately jarring, and pulls of her tank top in one fluid motion, arms flexing above her head. Ava is as well-exercised as a Time Bureau agent needs to be, but it doesn’t quite come close to the shape Sara keeps herself in.

 

“I think that’s a bit formal for someone who’s currently undressing themself,” Ava continues.

 

“But you’re always formal,” Sara says, meeting Ava where she is leaning up on her elbows. “Ava,” she finishes, breathing this into Ava’s mouth, a smirk on her face.

 

Ava wonders, momentarily, if Sara has ever said her first name before. She wants to hear it over and over again.

 

She leans back in, and Ava feels her belt leave her waist. There is a soft thud as it meets the floor somewhere in the room. Her pants follow, and then Sara’s, and then Sara is fumbling for some by the side of her bed, one hand still on Ava, and the lights dim.

 

The light that’s left is yellow tinged, and Sara, hovering above her, seems to radiate it out of her skin.

 

There’s nothing left in between them; their clothes are gone.

 

There is nothing left separating them, not time, or space. They have finally found the right time, and the right place.

 

Sara’s hands are everywhere except where Ava needs them. She knows that Sara knows this is driving her wild. Ava’s hands grip Sara’s arms, hard, and when she pulls Sara back down, kissing her harder than she has so far, mouth opening, Sara’s hands finally trail past the lines left by Ava’s underwear.

 

Ava doesn’t consider herself a needy person, but it’s not enough. Her grip gets even stronger, fingers digging into muscle, and she pulls away.

 

Sara catches her eye, and her hand moves, her fingers circling, then finally settling inside of Ava. And then it’s almost too much, and Ava blinks, stars already forming on her eyelids.

 

She holds herself together, and her lips find Sara’s neck, and mouth meets the skin there, sucking hard, because there will already be bruises on Sara’s arm, and what’s one more?

 

Her hips rock, moving in time with Sara’s motions, her grip loosens, and she skates her hands over every bit of skin she can reach, determined to learn every square inch off by heart.

 

Sara’s hand curls inside of her, and she knows she is close, but time seems to have stopped having any sort of meaning. Her thoughts jumble, and her hands settle.

 

They could’ve been there hours, or maybe just minutes. Either seems right.

 

She is drunk on a feeling. Everything is hazy in the low light.

 

Time slows down. She is being broken down and built back up, piece by piece, ever so slowly, ever so carefully. Her eyes close, and Sara’s hand, the one that isn’t tearing her apart at the seams, finds its way to her cheek, thumb stroking along her cheekbone. She is so gentle that Ava almost feels bad about the shadows she know will follow where her fingers gripped, but she can’t quite.

 

She’s never been a possessive type, but now she is.

 

Sara’s hand doesn’t stop, but it’s never quite enough, Ava doesn’t think anything will be enough. She wants more, her body pressing into Sara, hips lifting.

 

And then Sara’s thumb joins, friction exactly where she needs it. The pressure builds, and Sara kisses her slowly, and deeply, and, in what feels like the culmination of everything, Ava finally lets go, falling, knowing that the string between her will stop her before she hits the ground.

 

Sparks fly, her whole body is warm, and she forgets how to breathe for a second, gasping for air when Sara pulls away. A wide smile stretches across her face.

 

Ava is still glowing. Her mind is still spinning. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them, Sara is still there, and no-one has ever looked at her the way Sara is right now, and that _can’t_ just be luck.

 

That has to be something more, something more carefully planned, something that looked at these two people, and tied them together inextricably.

 

Sara reaches out a tucks a piece of hair behind Ava’s ear. It’s not much. It doesn’t rock her world, but when Sara leans down and kisses her, the afterglow still burning in her stomach, Ava Sharpe definitely believes in soulmates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! this ship now owns my entire ass so I will most likely be writing more in the future, if inspiration so hits! once again, thank you ALL for such lovely comments on the previous chapter.


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